Beasts of No Nation by Uzodinma Iweala

A short novel (publishers seem to have abolished the novella) told in the voice of an African child soldier that is amazing in its ability to stay in voice. I like the novel, it's unique, it's a compelling subject, it's very skillfully written, but I kept wondering why the kid is talking in this voice. It's the voice of immigrant English. But why would this kid be telling his story in English? It suggests that the audience for the novel is American (or at least English speaking) and the voice is the one that average Americans expect Africans to speak in. I suppose in lit crit thought there's a lot that could be made of this--the child telling his story to the audience that has so far been ignoring it, not to his own people who are well aware of it--but I'm mostly interested in it as a writing decision. The novel was written in English, by a writer fully capable of smooth, literary English, but if the voice of the narrator was not this chopped up lyrical pidgeon English, there would be no book. This is very much a voice-driven story; the voice creates the sense of chaos and strangeness of the world of war, and especially the confusion of being a child at war. There is almost no character development, and really very little plot (while there are many kidnappings, killings, and rapes, it's a strangely plotless book). It is the voice that holds the reader to the page--which suggests to me that this could have been a really phenomenal short story, and perhaps should have been, though I admit I cruised through the whole novel, and enjoyed it most of the time.

Home Land by Sam Lipsyte

As opposed to exuberant writing (see Adam Johnson's Parasites Like Us), the novel Home Land is manic writing. At first, the voice (and the author) seemed totally out of control--too anything goes--but then about ten or so pages in, I simply accepted it. This was a rant--a barely in control rant that belonged to a barely in control character--and I was going to go along simply to see would happen next. And then the book got really really funny. It was probably funny from the start, but I had to let my defenses down and accept that this wasn't realism so I shouldn't be expecting realistic behavior.

The narrator is a middle-aged, unsuccessful, seemingly not very intelligent, middle-class guy who keeps sending totally insane updates to his high school newsletter. At first, I was very suspicious of this conceit--I didn't want to read a whole novel of newsletter updates--but ultimately if Lipsyte hadn't stuck to it, the novel probably would have been much less successful. And this device is precisely the kind of thing that often gets struck down in workshop, where students have a tendency, if un-attended, to not let writing get too strange. I could see myself even suggesting that the author use the device as a start to the novel, but to let it drop quickly. And to some degree Lipsyte does--he uses scene, he uses far fewer "dear reader" moments in which he directly addresses his fellow alumni (the Catamounts) as the novel goes on, and he culminates in a high school reunion that involves many of the alumni that previously were seen in the updates. But he never lets go of the idea completely and it pays off in the end. So this is just a shout out to those who take risks in workshop and don't let the rest of us dissuade you from them.

Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian and The Golden Compas by Philip Pullman

Students often like to make the case, especially if they don't like their grades, that what one likes in writing is subjective (and therefore can't be graded). I like to make the case, especially with students, that really great books aren't subjective. That quality writing goes beyond taste to be impressive no matter what the preferences are of the reader. And I believe this, but perhaps only with a fairly sophisticated, widely-read reader, who can recognize when a book is achieving its own goals. And Master and Commander, a book I read because of some quality recommendations from trusted friends and the force of millions (hundreds of thousands? I guess we're not talking television here) of fans, is a case of a book I could appreciate but not love. The Golden Compass, which I read for precisely the same reasons, is another. And the thing holding me back from love, I suspect, was character. Master and Commander is great at conveying a world (for those who don't know, the novel is the first in a long series which traces the friendship of a Captain and a doctor, as well as a lot of battles at sea, during the Napoleonic Wars), and it has what I guess is an exciting plot, but I never felt close to the people involved. My favorite moments were the character moments, but the book was mostly battles. So it was liked but not loved.

The Golden Compass also felt more plot-driven then character-driven. This I suspect is the difference between those who favor Rowling over Pullman--character over plot or character over ideas. Pullman's novel (the first in a trilogy) is undoubtedly more original than Rowling's Harry Potter series, and its ideas are definitely more complex and sophisticated, but I just don't know his protagonist (I've already forgotten her name--see!) as well as a I know Harry, and so I worry about her less, and therefore feel less as I read.

And I suppose this idea--that I rank a novel that makes me feel over a novel that makes me think (for the record, I prefer novels that do both)--does support the fact that there is a level of subjectivity to responding to writing. Though grading fairly still isn't nearly as difficult as students think it is.

Max Perkins: Editor of Genius by A. Scott Berg

I tend to enjoy the history of publishing, and so found this bio of superstar Scribner's editor, Maxwell Perkins, quite interesting. Perkins is most famous for making famous F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe. He's also responsible for Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, and a lot of other authors who were apparently mega-sellers in their day but are no longer known. I've known the facts about Perkins for quite sometime (he's famous in my family for being married to my grandfather's cousin--how's that for useless name-dropping?), but I had never before realized that he favored a certain kind of writing and a certain kind of writer. Apparently he liked larger-than-life people who wrote about their large lives. So while he had a keen eye for finding good stylists, what he was really looking for were writers with built in stories to tell. It was Perkins who pressed Rawlings to write a book about her childhood in the Everglades, a book that became The Yearling.

I myself have never been one for writing overtly autobiographical fiction (probably because I like a life that's smaller than life), and as I read this bio I started to wonder if I discourage (or discourage by omission) autobiographical fiction from my students. One of the factors of creative writing classes is the student-writers are often quite young. And so to suggest they should write autobiographical fiction seems sort of absurd. Yet I've found that the undergraduate workshops I've taught in creative nonfiction have generated some really good material. And the non-autobiographical fiction generated in workshop is often out of this world (I mean literally, not as a description of its qualities). Not that science fiction/fantasy writing is anything to be ashamed of, but it's not typically what I'm trying to teach. So maybe the key is to help students identify what of their autobiography actually makes for good writing. It's often the stuff you wouldn't want to admit to in a room full of near-strangers, so we wouldn't have to get into the details; yet I think it's worth at least talking more openly about using autobiography as source material, and talking too about how to transition it into fiction.

Parasites Like Us by Adam Johnson

This first novel is crazy in all the best ways. It's a perfect example of what I call exuberant writing: writing that is so wildly imagined, so much the creation of its author, that it seems as if it must have been written in a manic fit of inspiration. Now the reality, I suspect, is it was written in daily toil as most novels are--but like some books I mentioned previously--Eyre Affair, Lives of the Monster Dogs, Harry Potter--it is so imaginative that it seems like it must have been fun to write. What I'm really saying is it's fun to read. It's not a tour-de-force of character development or even plot, but every page is rich with observation and an incredible attention to detail. The premise is North American humans have largely gone extinct and one of the remaining survivors is going to tell us why. But instead of the tone being apocalyptic (as in Atwood's Oryx and Crake), it's satiric. Johnson was a student of Ron Carlson's (the beloved) as an undergraduate and the novel reads to me as if one of Carlson's narrators bred with the narrator of Don DeLillo's White Noise and they entered a setting by Vonnegut. But the novel is a good example of influence rather than imitation. These other authors show through, but the book feels entirely Johnson's own. Perhaps the key to this is the blending of several influences rather than following only one.

Paradise by Toni Morrison

My Women in Literature class has been reading Toni Morrison's novel Paradise, and my graduate workshop is reading Song of Solomon (well, we were until Hurricane Wilma cancelled class) so I've been thinking a lot about Morrison lately. She has one of my favorite quotes on writing "I wanted it to be narrow and deep" which she said about writing her novel Beloved. I tend to use the quote in reference to short stories because they truly need to be narrow and deep. Morrison's novels--even the shortest The Bluest Eye--do not seem narrow to me (though I guess some do to her). And as I reread Paradise, that was one of the things that struck me: as much as I admire the novel (and Morrison is probably my favorite living writer), I could never write as she does. My brain simply doesn't work in that many layers. It feels as if Morrison, in order to achieve her constant shifting between characters, times and ideas, must hold the entire world of her novel--all of her characters, their past, present and futures--in her mind at once. My mind is far too straightforward to do that (another word for that might be simple). And my mind seems to be reflected in my fiction (which stylistically is simple). Perhaps Morrison's style is a product of huge amounts of revision, but it still feels like it must be something organic to the way she thinks.

Another thought: how does a writer achieve "deep." There are surely many different answers to this, but it seems as if taking on a historical subject often leads writers to a larger scope than contemporary subjects do. Also adding spirituality as one of the characters' concerns seems to increase scope. I'm not suggesting we all take on religion, but that by giving our characters concerns that are larger than daily living, we raise questions that will never be answered and will never go out of style--again potentially giving weight to the work. The recent death of August Wilson, who wrote ten plays, each one set in and depicting a different decade of Twentieth Century African American life, made me think again about the idea of artists taking on a subject in multiple works. This grouping of his plays gives a depth to Wilson's work that might not have been as strong if the plays didn't work in combination. It's worth giving some thought to what you want to do as a writer, not just in a single work, but overall.

Fairly irrevelant writer encounter anecdote with a moralistic ending: When I was a kid (pre-memory) my mother used to take my brother and I to a bakery in Istanbul where she would sometimes encounter James Baldwin. When my parents came to visit me as an undergraduate, I took them to the local ice cream shop, where my mother literally bumped elbows with Toni Morrison. While I like the very thought of rubbing (or bumping) elbows with genius, especially literary genius, I think what's most important about these encounters is that I have a mother who recognizes James Baldwin and Toni Morrison when she seems them--and who gets excited about it. Over the past year my five-year-old nephew Devin and my dad have been telling each other a narrative about Devin and Vinden (my dad tells the story, my nephew sings the musical numbers), and lately they've been adapting it into a movie. Yesterday they story-boarded it and my nephew asked that it be bound (read: stapled) and then he ran around shouting, "My book, my book!" (note: this is what I plan to do once I finish my novel draft). My point here is I see where I came from. My parents deserve the credit.

Ssh, Reading in Progress

After the great Zadie Smith disappointment I have moved on to The March by E.L. Doctorow, which received so many great reviews that I went ahead and bought it without even browsing. And so far: beautiful beautiful.

I'm also dipping periodically in and out of The Best American Essays 2005 (I'm very much looking forward to reading the infamous David Foster Wallace pro-lobster essay from Gourmet as soon as I log off) and am expecting an Amazon delivery shortly of The Best American Short Stories 2005 and Jane Smiley's Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel.